Metrics for Creatives: How Airtable measures success through their Content Efforts: Margaret Jones, Head of Content at Airtable

Speaker A: M hello everybody and welcome back to Martech Masters. I'm here today with Margaret Jones. She is the content lead on Airtable. Thank you for being here Margaret. How are you doing today?

Speaker B: I'm doing so well. I've had almost a full French press of coffee so I'm ready to go.

Speaker A: So this is going to be a great episode. We can tell already it's going to be awesome. So Margaret, why don't you tell us a little bit about you. I know we are going to talk a little about creativity and content and how, how to manage content and no code. We are very excited about this episode. Tell us a little bit about you and what you do at airtable and a little bit of what Air Table is. So everybody knows that too.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So I lead content at Airtable. Um, that means a lot of things. We're a pretty lean team. Uh, my team does everything from awareness, driving content, brand facing content, uh, all the way through the funnel to helping people use Airtable better. So we're driving against metrics ranging from m, uh awareness and acquisition to product activation to driving sales pipeline. So big wide swath of content types and channels and formats and goals, um, that maps actually very well to my own experience. Prior coming to Airtable, I've been doing this for kind of a long time. Makes me feel old when I really think about how long I've been doing this for. Um, but uh, my background maps to the B2B space. I've worked really closely with sales teams. Um, I worked at Marketo as my first real content job. When I started working there I did not know what content marketing was. In fact I was not sure what content was or what marketing was. Um, and a year later I found myself presenting at ah, Content marketing World on content marketing. So a real boot camp experience. Um, but uh, you know what I took from my time at Marketo, such a great place to start a content career was you have to measure everything. You have to be accountable for the performance of your content. You will not get a seat at the table if you're just producing amazing content. Unfortunately. Uh, so starting with this very metrics driven role uh, has really helped me form how I think about content today. Um, since then I worked at a company called Eventbrite. Uh, I worked uh, I managed a global content team. Nine different languages, 11 different countries. Um, you know, really, really, really went deep into operations. When you think about managing those many, uh, that many, those many, that many, that many people, um, the coffee is just working all of those people, all of those languages, all of that localization. Uh, and then I went on to lead, uh, brand strategies strategy content at airtable. So really thinking about across the funnel, across both sides of that marketplace, how do we express ourselves? Um, I then went to Envoy where I led brand communications, so managing uh, not only brand and pr, but also content in the traditional form. And now here at Airtable, as I said, I'm working across everything from demand gen content to in product content, uh, webinars, videos, um, you name it, um, and just having such a good time.

Speaker A: That's awesome. That's awesome. So we always like to talk about, I think there's a lot of, uh, themes here that we're going to definitely go back to and talk about creativity and, and your career and you know, you've done writing and editing and creating, you know, creative content, engaging content for brands and building brands with creative content. But we always try to connect personal passion to business and work passion. Right. Like we, we know passionate people are passionate in their lives too. So what are some of your personal aspects that you're passionate about? Some of your latest things that you're doing in the pandemic? Or tell us a little bit of what your personal life, uh, what your passions are and how those may connect with your business world and your job side of the equation?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I love that. Um, and I absolutely think that, um, well, I've been really fortunate to do work that I love and um, you know, that has been part luck in part really wanting it and focusing for sure. Um, but I think most people love content. Like I actually think being in content kind of immediately connects you personally to your work. We all consume so much content. Um, during the pandemic, uh, my partner and I have gotten really into TikTok. Um, um, it's perfect for new parents because really short time investment. Um, um, but you know, I'm an old, I'm an old millennial. Um, barely made, barely made the cut for that generation. And I love Gen Z. Um, I have step kids who are teenagers. I think teenagers are the best. Like these are, they're the best people. I'm sorry, that's just like the best age to hang out with or talk to or consume content from. Um, so TikTok is just like the place to go to really see how amazing this generation of teenagers is. Um, they are so much smarter and cooler than I ever was for sure. Um, but what I really love about TikTok is it's inherently conversational. As content marketers, we're always thinking about engagement. How can we get people to participate? TikTok is saying, not only will you. We're not asking you to, like, just comment on this video, we're asking you to make a video in response and people actually do it. You go deep into TikTok and every single video is a response to a response to a response to a duet, to a meme. Like, everything goes so deep. And I just love how that conversation is turning everyone into a content creator. Um, and, like, some of it is really good.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, really good. Yeah. I remember, for example, the sea shanties. The whole family got into sea shanties, and it was all a TikTok movement. What's interesting about what you're saying is that even though inherently I don't use TikTok and I refuse to use TikTok, uh, as a person, as a marketer, as a brand, my customers don't use TikTok, won't use TikTok because their audience is not there. But what's really interesting is through Twitter, through LinkedIn, through other channels I'm ending or even blogs, um, I end up watching TikTok videos that were built on that channel. So it's really interesting that you mentioned TikTok as this inherently communication channel that builds communication that's starting to pop everywhere. So there's something there. I don't know what it is, but there's definitely something there. And I'll definitely dig deeper into it. But thank you for sharing that. Uh, what is it that you do on Twitter, on TikTok, and what is it that that's. That you're passionate about? How do you use it to fuel maybe your creativity or things like that?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I am 100% a lurker. I do not participate in TikTok in a meaningful way. To me, it is a wonderful, endless scroll like that. That is one of the things that actually being in the platform does for you is just give you limitless content. Um, I will say my partner has learned how to make some amazing, amazing cocktails from TikTok, you know, and it really does simplify everything to, like, can you describe it in 15 or 20 seconds exactly? Um, which is the way that we like to cook or make cocktails. It's very simply. Um, so it lends itself to that. Um, but I would just say, like, the energy and the constant creativity and the freedom of those content creators. That's really inspiring to me also in my work, to just think about, what if we just put stuff out there? You know, what if not every And I'm an editor by like, passion and trade, right? Like, I love to tinker, I love to futz. What TikTok does for me is say, why don't you just push it out? Like, why don't you just see how this lands with people? Um, and it's not going to be done right. This, like, really engaging, participatory nature of the channel says, um, well, let's see what someone else can add to it. Let's see what this would sound like as a duet. Let's see, like, what joke someone might make from your joke. Um, and that's the other piece about TikTok is just the humor of it, like the refusal to take yourself seriously that I think is like deep in the DNA of a platform like that. Um, and also teenagers in general. Going back to my favorite folks, um, and that's so important in content is to just like, loosen up a little bit.

Speaker A: That's awesome. That's awesome. I know that in past conversations you talked about also improving work environments. Tell us a little bit about that passion too.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, gosh, we spend so much time. I know it feels different this year with so many of us. I'm sitting here in my bedroom, um, we've all got our kids crashing our Zoom meetings, but we spend so much time at work. Right. And I'm talking about, you know, folks, uh, who are coming in every day, who are, you know, expected to bring their whole selves to work. Right. Um, I remember my dad telling me when he started working at a law office, um, the boss bought a new copy machine and everyone, like, they had been wanting this new copy machine for years. And the boss came in and was like, I'm gonna get it for you guys. And he was instantly popular and that was all he had to do for, like, many years. People are just like, ah, that guy got the copy machine. Amazing. That's the kind of expectation people used to have of their office was like, wow, this guy's really making moves today. That is not the case. Right. Like when we were in physical offices, we expected to have, uh, you know, snacks and food and, um, the perfect, you know, multi use spaces and the right kind of lighting and the right kind of windows. Um, and now we want tools that support our collaboration in a really deep way. Um, and I actually think that's so fair. You know, there's a lot, there's a lot of trash talk about, um, you know, my generation. I would even say, you know, we're so entitled. We have such high expectations of what our workplace does for us, but they have such high expectations of the work we're doing. Right. Like, no one expects me to clock in at 9 and clock out at 5 and never think about my work again. The expectation is that I'm really pouring a big part of myself into my job and that's really key for me to be happy in my job is to feel like I'm bringing that whole self and to feel like I'm really engaged on a personal level. So if I'm going to engage on a personal level, my work has to meet me halfway. Right. So I am really passionate about both sides of that equation. One being, um, does your work have leadership training? Are you getting coaching on the things that you want to work on? Are you being exposed to new challenges? Are you getting really good feedback? I'm actually working on a book with my former boss about middle management and feedback. It's something I'm really passionate about. Um, but the other side of that is the tech. Do you have the tools that are actually making your work possible? We've all been in those situations where I love my job, I love my boss, I love what I'm working on. Um, I hate everything that I actually have to do to get my work done. We've all been there. Um, so working at Airtable has been so amazing for me because I'm taking those same kind of passions and that same feeling of your work should be rewarding, you should be doing your best work, you should feel good about it, your tech should not be getting in your way, which is unfortunately all too often the case. Um, yeah, when I open my laptop, I shouldn't feel a sense of like despair. Right.

Speaker A: And you mentioned also that, you know, you come from a place where you, you need to work with content editing and creativity and, and trying to help teams be all build these things, especially now remote. Everybody has to still be creative and, and you need to, you need to be able to communicate. So you mentioned when we talked about, you know, how you are doing all these things from a no code, uh, side of the equation, which is very interesting to us because we're very invested in brand affinity marketing and creating, creating creative and engaging content to build brands. But also we want to do it in a no code way. We don't want people to have to learn to, uh, develop apps in order to do all these things. We want to find the tools that are doing it, making it easy for everybody. So why don't you talk a little bit about that experience and how it actually Helped you create better content.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean this is, coding is so intimidating, right? Even, even when I say no code, I get a little sweaty. Like I'm like, what is that? Um, you said the word code. I'm nervous. Um, and I think that that, that dichotomy and that like that it's a false dichotomy to use it, to use a grad school term. Um, it's not real. There's not some magic, uh, line between, oh, a thing that, that has to be coded and a thing that can just be like built or done in some way. But if you are a non technical person, very much count myself in that group. Even though I've spent my career thinking about content operations and thinking about workflows and thinking about how the work actually gets done, it would never occur to me to think of myself as a technical person, which is kind of crazy. Um, and so I've always been very intimidated by that. Um, but what airtable does, and this has kind of been the big shift for me, is that folks who don't know how to code, who don't know coding languages, can still build their own apps, build their own software, build their own automations. Um, so, uh, the example that I always like come back to is the first time I built an automation in airtable, which was, um, it was a really simple automation. Um, folks who work in content are probably very familiar with the challenge of reviews. People want you to review things, um, and it's really nice that they get plugged into your workflow, uh, and you've built a workflow and they just, you know, check off a box and it asks you to review it. We absolutely have that in airtable. But let's be real, people are just going to come at you async and say, hey, can you look at this thing? Probably half the slacks I get are, hey, Margaret, hoping you could take a look at, um, so I was in like my first couple of weeks at airtable. Um, I'd use the product before but like not extensively. And I knew we had these automations but I'd never checked them out. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm starting to like, the reviews are piling up and I'm like, okay, how am I going to work out these? Um, you know, how am I going to prioritize these? Do I have the things that I need to review them? Like, do I have the info I need? When are these actually due? Yada, yada yada, all the questions you ask. Um, and then I thought like, oh, I can. I can build a form, um, so, you know, basically a content brief. And that will make sure I'm getting all the information that I need. For example, I want to know, you know, what stage is this in? Is it a first draft or is it a final draft? Um, have I reviewed this before? That's a piece of information that I want. Um, do you want, like, a. This is one of my favorites. Do you want to copy edit, or do you want to developmental edit? And I actually write what those things mean because sometimes someone sends you something and they just want you to check for typos, and you end up giving them a bunch of feedback about structure and then nobody's happy the topic is wrong.

Speaker A: No, don't tell me that. Tell me if it's okay or if it's not okay.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. You've got it. You've got to capture that. It's so. It's so constant. So I built a form that collected all that information. Amazing. And I said, okay, if someone asks me for a review, I'm going to send them this form. It's going to populate my airtable database. Boom. I'll know how to do it. Um, but then I was thinking, uh, so what do I do when the form is filled out and it's populated my base? I have to send them a Slack. Right? That's. Well, first of all, how do I know it's been filled out? I need to somehow get notified it's been filled out. But then also I need to tell them, yeah, I can review this. Um, that's a step that gets missed a lot. People just assume I filled out your form. I assume you're reviewing this by the date I gave you. End of story. I'll start harassing you on the date that it's due. Um, so I wanted to make sure I was building in a step for me, uh, accepting the review, which is also my opportunity to say, that date is now workable for me. Here's a new date that I think will work better. Um, I went into our little automation side panel and I was like, okay, I think I can do this. I started clicking around. It's super wysiwyg, if you understand, even super Basic, if, then in that logic, if this form is filled out, send me a Slack notification. Um, and with my total lack of coding experience, I built out, um, a notification to let me know a form had filled out. Um, a notification that would, uh, send the requester, uh, a Slack message, letting them know I'd actually Accepted the request. Um, and then a notification letting them know when it was done. So those three notifications probably took me 15 minutes to build all three of them and test them out and make sure that they were working correctly. And I use those every single day. And those are emails and Slack messages that I no longer send.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: Um, it's all automated. It gives them all the information they need. So um, a link to the Airtable record, a link to the review to, to whatever they're having reviewed that metadata about the type of review that they wanted. It all just auto populates. And that was such a just mental game changer for me. Um, sorry, I can hear my kid. But uh, that was when I started saying, okay, like what else can I automate? Um, which is such a. I showed everyone on my team. I was so excited. Um, and it's really changed my whole mentality. Right? Because now I'm not saying if I have a problem, if something's bumming me out, if I am feeling despair when I open my laptop now, my, you know, it used to be I think like, ugh, that's so annoying. I wish we could fix that. Now I think like, oh, I can probably fix that. Um, and that's huge. Right? And that's how I want everyone to feel. So that's how I kind of connect my passion to my work here at airtable.

Speaker A: That's awesome. And how do you think that, what do you think airtable and tools like, like Air Table are great for markers? Trying to keep that creativity flowing and trying to work with teams again. Yes. Automations using content, sending things to each other. But how, how can we use these tools to continue to create things that are going to be engaging and create things that people will love, uh, when we're not together. I believe that a lot of people are having some challenges with that and, and it is, and it is important to find the tools and the processes to continue that creativity flowing. So tell me a little bit about your experience with that.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I mean to start with, you know, no tool will make you creative. Right? Like no matter how good your tech is, it cannot have a good idea for you. Right. But what it can do is move all of that garbage aside, all of those repetitive tasks, all of that operational overhead, all that admin work that drives you crazy and to me is like the death of creativity because, um, this is just how our brains are wired. When you have a really simple, ah, low effort, mechanical task, you will be drawn to that task before you are drawn to your Big, difficult, heady questions. So your attention is, that's why Slack can be so disruptive. If you have it turned on. While you're trying to think about things, you've just got these tasty little bites that you can keep coming back to. Um, so automating those, putting those into a database, into a. An actual workflow process that takes that, it moves it all aside so you can focus on your work that you actually care about. Um, so that's like the first way is just like loosening you up for creativity. Um, there's also a piece around you mentioned collaboration, which is so key to the way that we work. You know, content. I always say this, like, good content doesn't happen by itself in a silo. Like, my little team, my little content team, we need other people. We need to bring other people in. Um, and it's not because we get in trouble if they don't review our work, it's because they actually have something of value to add to everything that we do. So if I'm using a system that's siloed from everyone else, um, I won't name names, but I've used tools that are specifically built just for content people, just for content teams. Great. And they feel you get into it and you're like, ah, they made something for me. This feels so good. I couldn't even get my PR team into those tools because they really were just for me and my team. Um, which again would be great if me and my team could just create content by ourselves. But we need PR to come in and give their perspective. We need product marketing to come tell us what's happening. Um, we need to be plugged into the product roadmap. We actually need all of that to come together and we need that to be really seamless for folks or else we're just going to find ourselves constantly duplicating information and constantly having to track things down. And that's another one of those just like creative brain drains, right? If you're constantly having to do that kind of admin work. Um, so that's the way that airtable has really allowed us to bring everything together and see what everyone is doing, get all that great visibility that so many tools tell you they will give you, but unfortunately do not. Um, and give you that single source of truth that so many tools tell you they can give you and unfortunately do not. Um, the thing that is intimidating about airtable is that it's so extensible. There's so much you can do with it that's all that is also absolutely its superpower. You actually can, you know, you can do whatever it is you need to do. The answer is always yes. So, um, that's how. That's how collaboration has really been, like, expedited and just like, I don't know, I want to use the word like, 100x by using airtable.

Speaker A: Of course, of course, of course. Let's talk a little bit about a little bit more about creativity and how you guys create content. Um, uh, tell me more about your content strategy process. Uh, of course you use airtable to organize it and organizing it and collaborating and keeping it clean and keeping those processes moving is very important. But tell me more about how you decide what kind of content to create and how is it gonna be engaging and how can you create that content that's gonna build a brand. You guys are growing incredibly. How are you doing it from the content side?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, I'll try to answer this question. I'll do my. You can herd me back to it if I get too off track. Um, because first of all, I think a lot of folks probably relate to what you just said around growth. And just like, every time I've been joking lately, every time someone on marketing hires someone, I have to hire someone because every time we start thinking about new campaigns or new strategies or new techniques, that's more content. Um, but realistically, I can't actually hire a new person every time we grow our team. Right? Um, so you have to just like, get more efficient and figure out how to, you know, like we always say in marketing, like, do more with less, do more with less. Um, work smarter, not harder. All of those amazing things. Um, so the. Our creative process is actually, um, it's actually something that we do in Airtable. Interestingly, like, it all happens in airtable. Um, so to give you an example, uh, we. We have a great, um, our input form. So every quarter, I try to keep my team planning on a quarterly basis. Um, quarters are somewhat arbitrary, right? You could do this monthly, you could do this annually. Quarter feels good to me. The important thing is that you have a planning moment. Right? Um, so we at that point are getting inputs from everyone in the organization, and we use airtable to pull in those inputs so that we can look at them all together. Um, and we actually use our forms to, um, be pretty opinionated about the kind of input we give. Because if I go to our sales team and I say, hey, what kind of content do you want? They're going to give me, like, bless them, they're going to give me a lot of ideas that either, uh, we can't do that, don't fall into our team's purview, um, way more than we can do, et cetera. So, so I actually use forms to say, here's your dropdown menu, like here's the type of thing, Here are the 10 different answers you can give me. And that really helps me, um, kind of control the type of inputs that are coming through and also pattern match. Because if I'm getting one kind of answer from product marketing and another kind of answer from the creative team and another kind of answer from comms, you can see where this is going. It's really hard to pattern match and actually figure out what everyone, um, is sharing in their request. So we use forms to kind of consolidate everything, pattern match everything. Um, and then, you know, once we have all our inputs, we have to brainstorm, um, and it's really important for content teams. I always need to double down on this and say, um, it's not just about the inputs you're getting. If you are only bringing in inputs from other teams, you are no longer a strategic partner. Um, you are a production house. And there's nothing wrong with being a production house. Absolutely. But if what your team is aiming to do is to actually have a seat at the table and bring strategy, um, then it's important you're not just bringing in the inputs and saying, okay, we can do all these things. You're bringing them in and saying, okay, so here's what we think is actually going to work. Um, and that's where metrics come in. That is your input as a content strategist, as a content team. Here's what we've seen that's performed. Here's where we've seen it performed. Um, okay, sales, ah, leadership. If what you're looking for is more pipeline, but what you're asking me for is a topic that has demonstrated, uh, inability to actually generate pipeline. I'm going to come back to you and give you that feedback and let's see where we can get to together. And being able to actually approach the conversation with those performance metrics, that's the night and day difference between again, strategic partner and production house. So I know that's not that sexy when we're talking about creativity. For me to say, well, it's really about the numbers.

Speaker A: Well, actually it goes hand in hand with a lot of the conversations that we have with our customers and with other, you know, thought leaders in the industry. Uh, but at the end of the day without a strategy, the goals are not going to be achieved. And yes, it is important. First of all, I think there is value in what you mentioned. You know, survey internally, talk to your different teams, see what they're saying, ask what they need. Right? Like the sales team is talking to actual people every day. The customer service team is talking to actual people every day. Those two groups, you better listen to what they're saying. And of course, if you have feedback from sales and customer service and product, include that in your strategy. But that's not it. It's not doing what they say because they want that, but actually taking all of this and then creating a strategy around those needs and to address not only the need, but the why that is a need. Right. Sometimes that we need to dig deeper into. Why is sales asking for this when it's not going to create anything? What, what, what is disconnected here that will actually allow us to create a deeper piece of content or a process that will help them better than just creating a blog about something that makes no sense. Right, so 100%. Yeah, definitely, yeah.

Speaker B: I have though, been thinking, you know, I'm, I'm very metrics driven. Like that is, that's my, that's been my past, that's been my experience. Um, but there is a set of. I've started to be, I've started to think about metrics beyond the ones that I feel like content usually holds itself to, which are like, you know, your basic performance metrics, everything from traffic and page views and SERP ranking all the way to, um, you know, contribution to sales pipeline or something really bottom of funnel. Um, and I do think this is kind of where creativity can come in. Um, you know, measuring your content purely by those types of performance metrics is kind of like if I measured my, um, success in life by my net worth. Right. It's important. It actually has a big impact on your happiness. But there are things about my life that don't show up on that financial dashboard that are huge contributors to how good my life is. And I do think with content there is a similar set of hidden metrics, um, that I kind of think of as the. Are you proud of this work? Like those metrics, especially when you're just starting out and you don't necessarily have those really robust metrics that are going to tell you when you've been doing things for years and years at the same company, you start to have all this historical data. You can say, oh, this topic does so well. This format is working so, uh, effective for Pipeline, this one is driving enormous activation in the product to create great. But it takes time to get those. And sometimes you do have to operate on a different level and just say, is this good? Right. Like, before I even put this out

Speaker A: here, are we proud of it?

Speaker B: Are we proud of it? Um, and I've started to, like, my team actually breaks those down into,

Speaker A: I,

Speaker B: uh, guess you could call them metrics, um, but like quality. Right? Like, what are the things that we think contribute to quality? And having that conversation with your team, so rewarding, so interesting.

Speaker A: Oh yeah.

Speaker B: Hear how people think about these things. But you know, things like, um, you know, does this provide, uh, does this provide a new perspective? Like, that's a big one that we ask, um, like, does this say something that our competitors haven't said before? Or, um, would this be valuable to someone who's never going to buy our product? That's like a classic content marketing question you might ask. Um, but starting to quantify those, which is like a very, it's a funny exercise to take the kind of like qualitative, hard to quantify, um, metrics and convert them into something you do actually quantify, um, has been a great exercise for my team. So we're actually scoring content, like giving a report card on the content before it ever sees the light of day.

Speaker A: That's awesome. And you know what's interesting is that we have a running theme here at Martech Masters, which is how do you measure success on long term brand affinity efforts? And you know, video series, podcasts, even written content is the same thing. You know, people say, yes, it increases SEO, visits, leads, customers. Yes. But all of that comes with time and measurement and a lot of it depends on time. And sometimes you cannot even ping pong, you know, specific video to a cell or specific picture process with podcasts. But it's very interesting that you're saying that because we always ask, how do you measure success on these efforts when you can't really track everything? And I love that you're bringing it back to. We can track it with visits or leads or engagement, but we can track it internally on how happy we feel about it and how does it make us feel? Or things that are not so much quantitative but qualitative and. And then say, yeah, we're proud of this and this helps people and it's brave or whatever it is that your metrics should be and how you feel about your business and your brand and then run with those. And if something is not brave or not, uh, you're not, you're not proud. Do not ship it. Do not send it out. Redo it. Great example. We just did a whole case study. We were doing a case study about doing six websites for a hospital, um, chain that like a. Six different hospitals that were doing marketing for them. And we are building a story about how we build these six websites in six months that is impressive on its own. And we wrote the whole story and we were all like, yeah, it's not great. Like we, we are not happy with this story and we rewrote the whole thing and that has to happen in order for that story to be, to resonate with the right people to actually tell the story. We, we. It was longer. It was actually double the size. It ended up being a shorter story but more impactful just because we went back and said why are we writing this? Like who is it going to read this? So I appreciate that you bring back. What are some of those metrics? Do you, do you say internal happiness? Are we proud? Do you have them on a list? Is it a checklist that you go through?

Speaker B: Yeah, we do. It's of course it's an airtable. We have a base that um, basically asks the author or sometimes the editor depending on the specific workflow of the piece to you know, rate one to five stars. Um, on I think we have 15 different attributes and then there's a. And then it auto generates a score. Um, and it's kind of, you know, we all we take. Yeah, it is fun. You like make a little report card for every piece. Not every writer loves this process, but writers who are really invested in improving do tend to really love this process. We work with uh, uh, freelance writers, folks who you know, aren't, who aren't you know, full time working at airtable as well as of course many people internally are writing a lot as well. Um, and I love being able to invest even in folks who are not full time in that way to say, hey, you know, uh, over time I've noticed because I can you know, generate a dashboard to show you um, that uh, concision, which was something that we were really like struggling with in like your drafts that you're writing two quarters ago. Um, I'm noticing in the last few weeks like that's been through the roof like you've really like mastered this. Um, and that's such a nice thing to be able to do for someone who's not full time on your team. And it also trains everyone on my team and anyone who's editing to give that feedback and to start thinking about that feedback as they're reading and just sort of automatically, you know, scan for that as they're going through a piece. Um, so there's like, you know, there's. I tend to be resistant to some of that because, um, my background is in writing and publishing. Much, um, of what I consume does, uh, not fall into a traditional content format. Um, and I tend to really gravitate towards things that are surprising or unconventional. So I think there's a part of me that resisted even things like, um. I don't know if you've used Hemingway app to give your work a reading level.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Like, stuff like that. I've always kind of said, like, college level or. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're like, well, they're not. That sentence that they rated as overly complex is a perfect sentence. You know, um, you get really, like, resentful of it, and then you start to, like, try to game it and, like, make the sentence better, and you realize you have actually made the sentence better. And it's frustrating, but it's actually helping you write better.

Speaker A: Definitely.

Speaker B: Um, so this is one of those cases where, like, I think some folks can resist, especially if they are more on the creative side. And then you get into it, you're like, this is actually kind of fun. Um, and it's making my writing better, which is the goal here. Right.

Speaker A: It's. It's interesting that you're. We're talking about creative people, and I don't want to say adding constraints or limits, but it somehow shows them, um, the limits and the constraint and. And how creative people. And I include myself. I'm. I'm a painter, I'm a musician. I. You know, I. When you create limits, sometimes creativity is increased, not reduced. And, uh, but. But most of the time, human beings are like. They close themselves to limits because they're like, no, I want to be able to fly and, and do everything and spend months on this. No, no, you have two weeks. And it has to be 500 words, and it has to be two minutes. And. And then. And then all of a sudden, amazing things happen because of that, uh, of those limitations. So it's interesting that we're going from a quality side, but it's also somehow increasing creativity. And also you can have feedback that might not be lovely, you know, every day of your life, but. But over time, you can say, hey, you're doing a great job on this. This is growing, by the way. This is. This is not going great. What's happening? Uh, what do we do? We need to have a conversation about this other thing. So, uh, yeah, yeah, I love that. That's a, that's a great tip. That's a, that's a pro tip right there. And I really appreciate you sharing that with us. Uh, and of course, using a tool like airtable to organize all of this and make sure that, uh, that it's automated and it doesn't become a more a problem. Running something like this is, is the key to all of that.

Speaker B: Yeah, you never want to. And that's something I love about just working at airtable and kind of being in this environment of like, oh, let's put that in airtable, let's automate that, let's build an app for that, blah, blah, blah. Um, it means that when you have a big idea like that, like, you want to create a process, it's really fast and it's, and it's kind of always on and you like, you kind of, you set it up and then it works for you and you can keep optimizing it. But by instituting something like a process like that, you, you're not adding all this crazy admin to your plate, which is like the last thing anyone wants to do.

Speaker A: That's awesome. That's awesome. Uh, Margaret, this has been amazing and I really appreciate you sharing all of this. First of all, where can people find your stuff, your follow you, or have a conversation with you? Uh, we'll put the links here, we'll share them on the blog and everywhere. Um, anything else you want to share from your experience at airtable or anything else you want to share in general?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, of course. Um, um, you know, I'm a lurker. As I said. I don't, I, I, I, I'm, I'm very much behind the scenes, like a lot of people who professionally create content. I think that's true. Um, but I will plug someone, uh, at my team, on my team at airtable. Um, Aaron, who has a series of live streams called Automate. All the things M. It's a, uh, a T, I think that's right. Um, IO. So, um, you can check that out and go to his live streams. It's amazing. Basically, he on the fly, um, designs basis for people. People show up and they're like, I need a CRM or I need a production calendar. And he'll just ask them questions and start building their base. It's fascinating. My favorite weekly viewing. So if you want to just like, get a taste of like, base design and like, why databases are amazing, not intimidating, that's a huge place to start. Um, I'd also check out our YouTube channel and our blog. I can share those links with you. Um, just like, we've got a lot of great content. I'd love to get folks's feedback. Um, and then we have a new report, actually, with some really great stats, um, about the challenges of creating content right now and for marketers right now in particular, um, that you can use to, uh, arm yourself for conversations with your marketing leaders, um, or you can use to prepare for the next year. Um, lots of really interesting findings, um, like, surprising findings, and some that just made me feel less crazy. So I definitely recommend you check that out.

Speaker A: Um, yeah, please share all of those. We'll link them right here and we'll put them on the blog. Anything else you want to share with us? Uh, Margaret, this has been amazing. I really appreciate, uh, you being here today, spending the time with us, and, of course, sharing all this plethora of information and your creative process organization for marketing teams, creating content and some amazing tips on how to get feedback to your content team. I really, really appreciate you doing all of this.

Speaker B: Yeah, of course. My parting words would just be non technical. People of the world, content creators of the world, do not be afraid. It is so fun. Um, it's changed the way that I work, knowing that I can build things. I hate the word empowering because every company uses it, but, like, legit. You guys, this is empowering. This gives you power that you did not know you had. So, um, that's my final word.

Speaker A: That's awesome. Thank you, Margaret. Thank you for being here today and being a Martech Masters. And, uh, stay safe. Okay, take care. Bye. Bye.

Speaker B: Bye. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Martech Masters. Make sure to visit our website at, uh, next to watch the series or subscribe to our podcast to be the first to check out our newest episodes. Uh, if you enjoyed our content, please leave us a review or rate our show on your podcast. Apparently.